Zhang Tie had no idea what happened in the classroom afterward. By the time Barry and the others started raising their hands to vote, Zhang Tie had already walked out of the Seventh National Boys' Middle School gates.
Sometimes life was just a real bastard. You could be sitting under a tree, minding your own business and staring into space, when some son of a bitch would dump a few dirty plates in front of you and make you choose between washing dishes for free with no dignity and getting beaten black and blue!
Damn! One-Eyed Dragon had summed it up best. Some people thought that when you refused to let them insult you, you were insulting them. If that was the case, then fine. He might as well give them what they wanted and insult them to their hearts' content. What were they going to do, bite him in the ass?
As Zhang Tie left the school, he happened to run into One-Eyed Dragon, who had just walked out. Since they'd met, Zhang Tie couldn't pretend he hadn't seen him. Besides, it looked like they'd be walking the same way for quite a while.
"Captain Colin, are you heading to the Battle Hall?" Zhang Tie greeted One-Eyed Dragon first. It was no secret that One-Eyed Dragon worked part-time as a coach at the Iron Thorn Combat Hall.
When Captain Colin saw Zhang Tie, he remembered the boy's tough performance at the Battle Hall the previous day, and his impression of him improved considerably. This kid really had what it took. He was a man through and through, and Captain Colin admired that. It made him feel his eye for people was pretty good after all. "That's right. I'm on my way there. I heard you've got another part-time job, too. At a grocery store, was it?"
Captain Colin had no idea Zhang Tie was the "gutsy fellow," and had no interest in finding out. As far as he was concerned, everyone had to take responsibility for their own choices. If "that gutsy fellow" had dared to lead Gelis and the others into such a pit, then he had to be brave enough to face the consequences on his own. There were plenty of students at the school, and Captain Colin wasn't anyone's babysitter.
Knowing One-Eyed Dragon's temperament, Zhang Tie didn't mention what had happened at noon. Instead, he made a little small talk with Captain Colin.
"Yeah, my family found me that job. I've been doing it for quite a while."
"How's it working at the grocery store?"
"The owner's nice, and I've learned quite a bit..."
The two of them chatted casually as they walked along, slowly disappearing into the distance...
Only after they'd gone far away did Gelis and the others emerge from behind the trees beside the school gate. With grim faces, they watched Zhang Tie and Captain Colin's retreating backs, their teeth grinding with hatred.
"What do we do? I didn't expect this kid to be so close to One-Eyed Dragon. Looks like they have quite a relationship," Sha Long said, his face dark. What had happened at noon was just Gelis's way of venting his frustration. Zhang Tie had interrupted his chance to show off in Teacher Daina's class that day, and he'd been holding a grudge ever since. He'd also heard that Zhang Tie had stood out a little in class over the past couple of days, so he wanted to put the kid back in his place. At this crucial stage, when their futures were about to be decided, Gelis believed the Seventh National Boys' Middle School could have only one star, and that star had to be him. No one else could share the limelight. Bullying some unlucky fool on a whim didn't seem like a big deal to any of them. None of them had expected Zhang Tie to have the guts to refuse at noon. In one moment of carelessness, they'd all suffered the darkest day of their lives.
Sha Long's words made everyone frown. The fresh, burning whip marks on their backs stung as if someone had rubbed salt into them, constantly reminding them of their humiliation and defeat.
"If we go after this kid, Captain Colin will definitely get involved. Maybe he only managed to trick us into that trap at noon because he had Captain Colin backing him. We can't deal with him as easily as we do other people," Jia Naier said bitterly.
"As long as we get him outside the school, and Captain Colin can't find evidence against us, we'll have plenty of ways to deal with him. Heh... heh..." Zu Haier chuckled darkly.
"What do you have in mind?" Sha Long asked Zu Haier.
Zu Haier looked around. From his manner, the others could tell that what he was about to suggest was probably something shocking, something he didn't want anyone else to hear. So they moved behind the tree again and huddled together, their four heads close as Zu Haier explained his idea.
"If we do that, the outcome won't be something we can control!" Zu Haier looked at Gelis. Among them, he was the one who came up with plans, but Gelis was the one who made the final call.
"This... isn't that a little... too much? I think it'd be enough to find a chance to beat him up a few times. After all, we're all... we're all... classmates... Someone could end up dead!" Jia Naier stammered, clearly shaken by Zu Haier's vicious plan.
"What, Jia Naier? You want out?" Sha Long gave Jia Naier a sinister look. "Have the wounds on your back healed already?"
"Jia Naier, you're still so naïve. In this era, how much are the words 'classmate' worth?" Zu Haier mocked him as well.
"I... I... I mean..." Before Jia Naier could finish, Gelis reached out and clamped a hand around his neck. The enormous difference between a sturdy Level Two Battle Soldier like Gelis and an ordinary student showed itself at once. Gelis lifted Jia Naier off the ground with one hand, his feet dangling as his face turned red and a pained, struggling expression slowly appeared.
"Anything else to say?" Gelis asked with a cruel grin. As it grew harder and harder for Jia Naier to breathe, he desperately shook his head twice in Gelis's grip. Gelis let go, and Jia Naier dropped to the ground, landing on his knees and coughing violently.
"We'll do it your way. Let the kid feel pleased with himself for a couple of days. When the Survival Trial comes, I'll teach him a lesson he'll never forget..." A chillingly cruel expression appeared on Gelis's face. The other three, standing around him, all smiled, some sincerely and some reluctantly.
If things got out of control, so what? At worst, one person would die. A black-haired kid, some nobody who had nothing to do with them—what did it matter? In this era, someone died every day in Black Flame City.
Zhang Tie usually called the boys at school beasts because he thought every one of them was like a rutting bull calf at that age. But he'd never imagined that among those beasts, there were some who were beasts in truth.
When Zhang Tie got to the grocery store, he saw Tang De rushing around, serving three customers at once. When Tang De saw his free helper arrive, he visibly breathed a sigh of relief...
"Show these two customers our 'Powerful Rat Poison'..." Tang De said something only Zhang Tie could understand...
A few minutes later, all three customers left with the things they needed, while Tang De stood there with a smile, counting the gold coins he'd earned.
Zhang Tie didn't know why, but ever since news of the Red Scarf Bandits had spread through Black Flame City, there had been more security officers and patrol soldiers around the train station. Strangely, Tang De's grocery store had gotten busier, too. Its daily customer count had risen by at least twenty percent. Sales of all sorts of odds and ends had improved, even some things that were best kept out of sight. The best-selling item was the "Powerful Rat Poison" Tang De had just mentioned. Before the Great Cataclysm, the substance hidden behind that code name was supposedly the raw material for one of humanity's most terrifying weapons. Before the Great Cataclysm, anyone who came into contact with it or swallowed it would be in danger. Even staying in the same room as it, or near it, could be fatal. The teachers at school said that before the Great Cataclysm it was called "radioactive material." The Great Cataclysm and the mysterious particles from Star of God had stripped this "radioactive material" of its radiative energy and altered some of its fundamental properties, making it impossible to use in those most terrifying weapons. But its poisonous nature had survived. Before the Great Cataclysm, people had needed an extremely complicated process to extract the substance. After the Great Cataclysm's violent geological upheavals, people discovered that some natural minerals thrust up from deep underground contained remarkably high concentrations of it. This natural, highly poisonous mineral, known as "Devil Stone," needed no complicated processing. Once ground into a fine powder, it was deadly. In the history of the Blakerson Human Corridor, a cult had once used this "rat poison" to cause a catastrophe that left nearly ten thousand dead or injured. For that reason, Black Flame City's official regulations classified it as a restricted item. In practice, though, it was a powerful weapon against low-level Devil Beasts and monsters for adventurers, Prospectors, and combat professionals who survived and fought in the wild to expand humanity's living space. Sometimes, all it took was a little of the stuff hidden in a simple food lure to kill several Devil Beasts. And if it was processed simply and smeared onto a weapon to coat it with poison, even an ordinary weapon could become far more powerful. So there was no way to ban its trade completely. Although private trading was officially forbidden, the Black Flame City authorities turned a blind eye, since there was no way to control it anyway.
"Rat poison" was a gray-market code name people used to let the substance be discussed in public to some extent. A grocery store near Black Flame City's train station, in such a lawless place where all sorts of people mingled, naturally wouldn't be short of "rat poison." Tang De's store carried real rat poison, as well as a deadly toxin sold under the same name. It could easily kill not only household rats but even the terrifying giant mutant rats outside the city. It was colorless and odorless. Unless someone used special methods to detect it, or the person exposed had reached Level Ten and possessed exceptionally sharp senses and mental perception, ordinary people and ordinary Devil Beasts wouldn't notice it at all. That was what made this Powerful Rat Poison so terrifying.
Ever since the curfew began in Black Flame City because of the Red Scarf Bandits, sales of the "Powerful Rat Poison" in Tang De's grocery store had steadily climbed. The stuff used to cost seventy-five silver coins per small bottle, and they'd sold only five or six bottles a month. Now it cost more than one gold coin, and they sold three or four bottles a day. Most of the people buying it were ordinary folks. Thinking of what had happened at school that day, and the unknown retaliation to come, Zhang Tie felt a sudden, uneasy dread...